tunities for enjoying it away. And yet to most of us-not always from inclination, nor from perversity of our own, but from the very necessity of the system, the social organization and habits which fetter us-what is the journey of life, but a race of steam and horse-power, care, haste, fatigue and dust? As Longfellow translates from old Manrique— "Our cradle is the starting place Of life we run the onward race, Jockeyed and jockeying, we make it but a breathless trial of mere speed. Our thought is of onward motion; and the compendium of our life-system, for the most part, is, that we get over the ground and then-into it. Let us prosecute, a little further, an inquiry which I started a moment ago. How many men do we know, each of us, who are willing, with moderate fortunes, to rest on them to give up or turn aside from their trades or their professions-in order to cultivate their minds, to improve and elevate their tastes, to form themselves for the duties of that essential, but almost non-existent class among us-the men of intelligence and cultivated leisure? We have high authority for saying that "Wisdom . . . cometh by opportunity of leisure, and he that hath little business shall become wise." How many do we know, any of us, who, in the maturity of their faculties, are willing-we will not say to desert their career, but to pause in it merely-nay, even to slacken their pace, so that they may gather the fruit from the trees under which they pass-that they may have the opportunity of wisdom, of which the good man speaks? How many will say-cheerfully, or at all-"the labor of half the day suffices, I will devote the other half to myself!" Few, sadly few! I grant you, that in the latter case the thing is not so easy, even where a man may have the will. We cannot remain part of a system and yet detach ourselves from it. If we are in the current, we cannot linger in the eddies. We must move on, or be left behind altogether. For this, the system is, in the main, responsible. But the other thing the retirement of those who can afford to break off from a system which coerces them-ought not to be difficult, and is not, where the will exists. It is a matter of every day occurrence, in other countries-certainly on the continent of Europe. Men wind up their affairs, invest their money, accommodate their expenses to their means, and sit down to be happy, while there is yet enough of the vigor of life left to make enjoyment healthy and robust-while there is enough of taste, appreciation and thought remaining, to be cultivated and developed-to be made useful as well as graceful. What an outburst of joyous freedom—what a dance upon broken manacles and chains sundered forever-what a hymn of gratitude and deliverance-is that inimitable essay of Charles Lamb's "The Superannuated Man"-wherein he tells the story of a servitude of six-and-thirty years in a counting house, brought happily to an end! How he dwells, like a liberated prisoner, on the toils and privations of his prisonhouse-the infrequent holidays, which were over before he could determine how they were to be enjoyed-the Sundays which brought no relaxation-the week at Easter, which was gone before its leisure was tasted-the wood of his desk, which had entered into his soul! And then the tumultuous gladness of his emancipation-the time that first, in all his life, he could call his own—the plans, the pleasures and the independence, upon a pension of two-thirds of a small salary!— "Had I a little son," he exclaims, in the rapture of his soul-"I would christen him Nothing to Do. He should do nothing." I am afraid that even in England, "Nothing to Do" would have had a hard time of it. With us, I am quite sure that his name would have interfered with his getting a situation. The humorist would have found it an unprofitable business to speak irreverently of the Evangel of Labor. What is the course under our system and with our ideas? Take professional men, for instance. We toil on, and toil on, almost without exception, until waning mind and broken body refuse to toil longer. We preach sermons-argue causesfeel pulses-spur on our jaded faculties along the narrow pathway of our traditional and artificial meditations, until the spur is answered no more. And what is the effect of this upon ourselves and the society of which we form a part? Every man's pursuit, exclusively followed, draws a limited portion of humanity within the circle of its light, leaving all outside unseen and uncomprehended. We see what we look for, in this world, and not much else. Niagara is one spectacle to the artist or the poet, another to the geologist, and still another to the man with a water-mill. The physician lives in a world whose occupants are patients; and the human phenomena, therefore, which he chiefly notices, are of the class called symptoms. To the lawyer, humanity takes the aspect, for the most part, of wrong attempted or resisted. His contemplations are of the morbid subject, generally, like the physician's. His occupations are of a sort which, it has been wisely said, may sharpen the edge, but are sure to narrow the blade, of the mind. So, too, the clergyman, in his turn, is apt to look at the world to which he ministers, only from the point of view of the transgressions which render such ministration needful. It is to him exclusively an abiding-place of sanctity and sin, and he is therefore apt to see more of both in it, than perhaps the facts will always justify. Thus it is with all callings by which men's lives and faculties are monopolized. Mr. Weller only exaggerated slightly, but in a perfectly natural direction, when he represented the undertakers as regarding mortality in the light of an institution intended for their benefit. The subject bears further illustration. What a solemn speech is that jeering one of Hamlet's, when he sees the grave-digger knocking the "sconce" of his imaginary lawyer about with his "dirty shovel," and the learned man "will not tell him of his action of battery!" What a comment is the whole of it upon a life which has gone on in the exclusive pursuit of an engrossing, artificial and restricted line of thought—from which, in spite of us, the narrowing and hardening processes of professional education and exercise have shut out art and literature-putting the extinguisher upon poetry and fancy-making social enjoyment a hasty and exceptional pleasure-and all the more, in proportion to the success and reputation which have seemed to reward the struggle! How the nature becomes subdued, upon the one side, "To what it works in-like the dyer's hand." How false and partial and unhappy are the views which it adopts, upon the other, of human life and character! "It seems to you," said Sydney Smith, addressing a congregation of lawyers, "as if men were bound together by the relations of fraud and crime. Laws were not made for the quiet, the good and the just. You see and know little of them in your profession, and therefore you forget them. . . . The lawyer who tempted his Master, had heard of the sins of the woman at the feast, without knowing that she had poured her store of precious ointment on the feet of Jesus." Take, now, the career of a successful physician-one who pursues that profession as an active calling-who surrenders his days and his nights to it, from youth to age-who foregoes social pleasures and the half of his domestic joys for it-who sees his children grow up, without that personal, parental contact which, more than all things else, is needful to form the young to usefulness and honor. What do you make of such a man-love and admire him as much as you may! He has discharged one class of duties, it is true. He has done much good, beyond a doubt. He has been useful in his generation, in the main, as an engineer of the human machine. But how has he discharged that trust, of all others the most imperative—the trust of his own gifts and faculties the great trust of himself? He has given physic to society, as the mere lawyer has given it counsel. Has either of them given to it the broadly cultivated powers-the matured and ample intellect-the tastes and the time-which belong to it, and to which it has a right, from every man, according to his endowments and his opportunities? They have conferred upon the Republic a doctor and a lawyer, |